The Interns are Coming
Summer is here. And despite the title of my story, the interns are too.
Every summer, JPL is invaded by the most amazing army of young, talented geniuses who infuse this place with their energy, their ideas and their enthusiasm. It’s my favorite time of year, the only thing that makes the Los Angeles heat bearable. Interns are the BEST.
When I say army, I mean this: seven hundred to a thousand of them. Even in COVID times, we had some five hundred last year. I usually have one or two; one year, I had six.
When I worked in Silicon Valley, I occasionally hired an intern. Once, it was to train up a young person who I later hired on as a junior designer. Once, it was because the founders of the company didn’t really want to hire another designer and they thought that hiring an intern would shut me up. Other times it was someone’s kid who was plopped in my lap because they wanted to be a UX designer but they had no idea how not-glamourous and hard it could be. What I’m saying here is, I had no real mentorship chops before I came to JPL, and for all my Silicon Valley interns: I’m sorry. I love you guys.
JPL changed all that. Partly, because I had the joy of working with a woman who used to teach at Mills College and UC Santa Cruz: my work bestie Dr. Alexandra Holloway. Alexandra is a designer, researcher and artist, with a PhD in computer science and she’s currently leading the Curiosity flight software team. Yeah, she’s pretty epic. And as you might guess from someone who spent time as a professor, she cares a lot about doing internships the right way.
I co-mentored some serious rockstars with Alexandra, before she switched to a different team. I think we’ve gotten pretty good at this mentoring thing, so I’d like to share some of the things we’ve learned along the way. Whether you’re an intern or a mentor, there’s something to gain here. Together we can raise the bar so that our students come out of school ready for the real world, rather than lost and confused
1: Take interns seriously. Have a plan.
At JPL an internship lasts for 10 weeks. Sure, some get extended. And we do have a year-round internship program. But the vast majority are 10 weeks, and are tied to a specific project.
Before I consider hiring an intern, I already have a list of things they can work on. I usually compile the list well in advance, trying to cover a nice wide range so that the intern actually has some CHOICE in their project. I also make them bite-sized projects, which can be completed in ten weeks, rather than gigantic things that have to be handed off to someone else to complete. I want my interns to have the experience of a project end-to-end, and I want them to have something they can put in their portfolio or write a paper about.
I shouldn’t have to say this, but I’ve never asked an intern to get coffee and neither should you. That’s symbolic, for you literalists out there. Also don’t give them lame filing jobs that no one else wants, don’t stick them at a receptionist desk, and don’t have them running errands: unless they are going to school to be a filing clerk, a receptionist or an errand-runner. Give your intern a job that will show them what it’s like to do the work they’re going to school for.
I also want to encourage you to give the intern a project that will actually get used. Don’t give them busy work that will never see the light of day beyond their git. Let them design a real feature in your real system that real customers will use. Everyone wants to know they have a purpose, and that they matter. Your intern will work twice as hard for you if they know that what they are doing is going to make a difference.
(For more about this method, see Alexandra’s and my paper, Backward-designing the perfect user experience internships for the Deep Space Network. I’ll link once it’s published.)
2: Prepare for the interns
Every summer, the education department at JPL (Yes, we are that lucky. Yes, I know you aren’t) gives us a training on how to be a good mentor. They also train us on all the administrative stuff, but to be honest I usually don’t pay a lot of attention to that. I hone in on the stories that mentors share about amazing interns, or the tips about how to connect your interns with other mentors, or other things that make me of more value to my interns.
In addition, the brilliant Alexandra also came up with a “What to Expect When You’re Expecting (an Intern)” presentation, which she readily shares with would-be mentors. It briefs people on how to select a project, how to scope it appropriately, how to coach interns and how to deal with common problems. It’s AMAZING and everyone raves about it every year. There is no reason that you can’t do the same for your company.
At JPL, there are also intern-only events, tours and social gatherings. All the senior members of the team make themselves available for interns, who are encouraged to set up meetings and talk to them about their jobs. We’re big enough that we also set up tours of different spaces around the lab — the space simulator, the robotics lab, the additive manufacturing lab — so that interns can get a peek at things even full-time JPLers haven’t seen. It’s a company-wide commitment to transparency and encouragement of these young minds. Again, there’s no reason you shouldn’t do the same. Get your VPs to make time for the kids. Get the hotshot developer to show them the newest demo before anyone else sees it. These are the things that fire up their imaginations and help them realize how great their chosen profession can be.
3: Hire good interns
At JPL the majority of interns come from good schools, have very good grades, and are headed for a bright future with top companies. To be an intern with us, you’ve got to be enrolled for the semester after your internship (so no new grads or people who aren’t in school) and you have to have a minimum GPA. In accordance with California law (and because it’s the right thing to do) all of our interns are either paid or receive college credit.
Most of that is amazing. I’d like you to reconsider the very first point, though: your intern doesn’t have to come from a ‘good school’.
I’ve had interns come from Art Center (that’s a very exclusive art school very close to JPL, for those of you who don’t know) with all the talent in the world and a sense of entitlement so big they thought they didn’t need to work. I’ve had interns from ivy league colleges who did a great job solo, but lacked the humility to work well with others. That’s not to say I’ve had only bad interns from ‘good schools’ — I’ve also had some rock stars, some of which work with me now as fulltime JPLers.
But the best interns I have ever had came from community colleges.
I started at a community college myself, and I know for a fact that community college is not substandard education. Community college is the democratization of the American Dream.
Many of the kids you’ll hire from ivy league colleges are going to be just fine in life. Either their parents could afford to send them there, or they were so brilliant and capable that they won a competitive scholarship. They’re going to go on to work for Facebook or Google or heck, even NASA without your internship. But the kids at community colleges are working their butts off, coming from families who aren’t rolling in dough, and are every bit as smart as the ivy league kids. And I’ll argue that they need the opportunity more, because their parents aren’t super-connected and they aren’t rubbing elbows with trust fund kids who can help boost their network in the future. If it helps, you can use my trick: I intentionally don’t look at the school someone is from. Try to hide that from yourself if your system will allow it.
When you’re writing your internship job requisition (announcement of opportunity), be specific about the skills you need. Don’t ask an intern to have every skill you can imagine, they are college kids. Keep it to just the actual skills that will be used in this actual project.
Look at every resume you get, and don’t let someone screen them for you. Make a point of calling and interviewing the kids with the best resumes AND with the worst. One of my best ever high school interns (yes, high schoolers can make good interns!) had a terrible resume, because his school and his family didn’t know how to teach him to make a good one. But during the phone interview he shined, full of promise and skill. I hired him on the spot, and he nailed his project, for which he had to learn a programming language AND learn about trajectory design.
Back to that job req: look for the skills you need, but also keep in mind that some things (like HTML or Figma) can easily be taught in ten weeks. Work ethic, an eagerness to learn, and a passion for your work cannot be taught. So if you’re talking to someone who has a passion for robotics but has never written HTML, she might be worth taking a chance on. If she has a history of teaching herself skills in order to achieve a task, there’s a good chance she’ll fill in her skillset and rock your project.
Prepare the interns
Having an intern means you get great work done fast by someone with fresh ideas for a relatively low price. All of that sounds great, right?
But it’s not free. You need to invest some of yourself, your time and your knowledge to get the most out of your intern, and to ensure your intern gets the most out of their time with you.
Every time I bring an intern into a project, I send them a bunch of background information before they even start. They can choose to read this or not; about half of them read it on their first day, which is fine. The point is that I took the time to figure out the 101 of what they need to know, to hit the ground running. At JPL, where we are literally making spaceships, that’s important. I venture to say it’s just as important where you are.
Within the intern’s first couple of days, I sit down with them to present a summary of all that background information, give them a chance to ask questions, and let them know what’s expected of them. I also make the time to set up a ten-week project plan, with regular checkins, a mid-point reassessment, and built-in time for user research. By helping them put together this plan in their first week, they have a roadmap to get from point A to point B, and they aren’t left wondering what to do while I’m off working on my five projects or whatever it is I do when I’m not with them.
I’ve also taken to including a “how to have a successful internship” section in my kickoff. It sounds weird, but young people who aren’t used to an office don’t necessarily know how to check in outlook for availability, or don’t know to keep slack open all day, and definitely don’t know the particulars of your office culture. By giving them all this info up front, I ensure that they know how to operate in the very strange alien environment that is Work.
I also give them a printed welcome packet which includes pictures of people they’ll come in contact with (or need to), contact information, locations of printers, lists of important slack channels — you name it. An intern coming to work with me basically has a reference manual on day one.
Orient the project toward success
Remember that I said I help the intern set up a ten-week project plan? We learned that one the hard way, because sometimes interns don’t know they’re in trouble until week nine, when there’s no time to salvage the project.
Your entire purpose in your mentorship life is to make sure your intern succeeds. The best way to ensure that is to give them structure, let them learn from your experience. I’m not saying you should present the kids with a plan on day one. I’m saying that you should sit with your intern, talk about the end deliverables and how to get there, and craft a plan together. That way, they learn how to break a huge project into small steps, and they learn how to communicate progress on a weekly basis.
I also mentioned that we have a mid-project reassessment. Five weeks in, you should have a very good sense of what your intern’s strengths and weaknesses are. You have time to pivot the project if you need to, and you absolutely should. Check to see if they’re going to get the original plan done on time, or if they’re running behind or if they’re stuck on something. Then change the plan to ensure that they will be successful, no matter what.
This could mean adding another intern to the project to help them. This could mean changing the scope of their deliverable. It could mean getting them an additional mentor who can teach them stuff you can’t. Whatever it takes, you need to get the obstacles out of their way so that at the end of their internship they have a Thing they can hold up and say “I made this!”.
Send them away, but don’t let them go
During an internship, I encourage my interns to meet other interns, but also to socialize with other mentors. Especially if I find out an intern has interest in an area other than UX, I’ll go out of my way to introduce them to people in that area. It’s my hope that maybe the intern will come back and intern again with us, for that mentor, and get more experience. Or if the intern is graduating, it’s always my hope that if I can’t hire them, someone else will.
I treat each internship as a long-term relationship. I keep the contact info of my former interns, and I have written many a college or grad school recommendation letter. (There have only been a couple I couldn’t recommend, and we don’t have to talk about them.) Even if I can’t hire them today, maybe in 5 years I’ll have a req and I already know how great they are. Or maybe they’ll send me an intern or a future hire. Your interns become part of your network, and if you’re lucky they’ll keep in touch with you. It’s amazing to see where they go after they hone their skills in your org.
TL;DR: As a mentor, an internship is a project just as important as your other ones.
I’ve told you a lot of things. They all boil down to one, critical thing I really don’t want you to miss: internships are a two-way beneficial relationship. Mentors aren’t just getting cheap labor from a kid who doesn’t know better. They have a responsibility to actually mentor. Interns aren’t just having an extended job interview. They must maximize the opportunity to absorb as much as they can about the difference between what they’re taught in school, and how the real world works.
Some companies guarantee interns jobs at the end of their internship. I don’t agree with this practice. I think that the full value of the internship needs to come from the internship itself, and not from a promise dangled in front of a hopeful kid. Remember, as an intern or as a mentor, that the internship allows the student to evaluate the company, its culture and its practices just as much as the company is evaluating them.
Students, make sure you intern with more than one company throughout your time in college. You need to learn the breadth of corporate cultures and work styles that exist out there so you can know what to look for in your first longterm job.
Mentors, remember who you were in your twenties and pay yourself forward. Mentorship is not a position of power or prestige and it’s not a way to get cheap labor. It’s a responsibility and an honor you wouldn’t be afforded without that young person who has entrusted their education to you.
Bring on the intern army!
Citing my own darn self:
Alexandra Holloway and Krys Blackwood. (In press). Backward-designing the perfect user experience internships for Deep Space Network operations. In S. Seagroves, A. Barnes, A. Metevier, J. Porter, & L. Hunter (Eds.), Leaders in effective and inclusive STEM: Twenty years of the Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators. UC Santa Cruz: Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators.